Boston Globe ‘Reports’ on HUBweek (Sponsor: Globe)

September 20, 2016

From our Walt Whitman desk

The hardreading staff has long whacked around the Boston Herald for celebrating itself and singing itself in so-called news reports. Now it’s time to give the Boston Globe a dope slap.

For starters, here’s what headlined the Globe’s homepage at 12:45 this morning:

 

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That’s the residue of this Michael Levenson piece at the top of yesterday’s Globe front page:

HUBweek aims for wider appeal

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There will be a party in the South End with music, art installations, and an unusual tasting competition featuring six beers brewed with water from the Charles River that’s been purified (they promise) by a local company.

There will be intimate seven-person lunches in Kendall Square where anyone can ask a Broad Institute geneticist why science hasn’t cured cancer or delve into the dangers of artificial intelligence with a director of the Harvard Innovation Lab.

And just before the first presidential debate, a prominent philosopher will lead an even more high-minded debate at Faneuil Hall, asking: Is it fair to tax the rich to help the poor? And should rich countries have the right to restrict immigration?

Such are the events — both playful and provocative — that organizers are planning for the slightly revamped second year of HUBweek, a festival devoted to the arts, science, and technology that is aiming to become Boston’s answer to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

 

Reality check: Those four paragraphs feature roughly the same number of plugs as Joe Biden’s head.

It’s not until the sixth graf (on the jump page) that readers learn this:

[O]rganizers are . . .  grappling with how to ensure that the annual festival — which is sponsored by The Boston Globe, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — does not cater solely to the business and academic elite in downtown Boston, the Seaport, and Cambridge, where most of the events are held.

 

Maybe the Globe should grapple with how to ensure that promotional material is not presented as news. The hardreading staff would be happy to participate in that high-minded debate.

Meanwhile . . . Free the Michael Levenson One! 

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Seriously? FOURTH Day with No Herald Heaney Obit?

September 3, 2013

This is really disgraceful: For the fourth straight day the Boston Herald has ignored the death of Seamus Heaney, a major literary and local figure who graced Harvard University with his presence for many years.

Here’s who aced out the great Irish poet today:

 

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We know what you’re thinking: How long will the hardflogging staff keep this up?

Tell you what: Assume the Herald has maintained its misguided ways until we tell you otherwise.

UPDATE: Tuesday’s Boston Globe even featured a Names item about Heaney’s funeral.

Poet Seamus Heaney laid to rest in Dublin

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DUBLIN — Ireland mourned the loss of its Nobel laureate poet, Seamus Heaney, with equal measures of poetry and pain Monday in a funeral full of grace notes and a final message from the great man himself: Don’t be afraid.

Among those packing the pews of Dublin’s Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart were government leaders from both parts of Ireland, poets and novelists, Bono and The Edge from rock band U2, and former Lebanese hostage Brian Keenan.

Ireland’s foremost uilleann piper, Liam O’Flynn, played a wailing lament before family members and friends offered a string of readings from the Bible and their own often-lyrical remembrances of the country’s most celebrated writer of the late 20th century. The 90-minute service ended with a cellist’s rendition of the childhood bedtime classic ‘‘Brahms’s Lullaby.’’

 

Sleep the Big Sleep, Seamus.

And sleep fitfully, Heraldniks.

 

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Still No Boston Herald Sendoff for Seamus Heaney

September 1, 2013

Seamus Heaney, once described as “like a rock star who also happened to be a poet,” was richly memorialized in most major newspapers yesterday, as the hardreading staff noted.

But not the Boston Herald.

And not today either. Here  are the obituaries the dicey local tabloid did run.

 

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Look, we know the Heraldniks don’t consider themselves part of the poetry set, but Heaney was a major literary figure who spent a good chunk of his life at Harvard, which means he was a major local figure as well.

Let’s just hope the paper acknowledges that tomorrow.

 

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Let’s All Go to the Lobby . . .

October 9, 2012

The local dailies give us two distinct glimpses today into the wide world of influence-peddling.

Boston Herald:

Greenway boss registers as lobbyist

Park seeking more public funds

The embattled Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy apparently hasn’t gotten the message that the nonprofit should be weaning itself off state funds — its leader has registered as a lobbyist to seek more taxpayer money.

Just months after state officials told the conservancy to come up with a plan get off public funding within five years, public records reveal Greenway Executive Director Nancy Brennan registered as a lobbyist this year. Brennan has been under fire since January when the Herald reported on the nonprofit’s six-figure salaries and bonuses, secretive practices and questionable expenses.

During the first six months of this year, records reveal, Brennan received $13,875 to lobby lawmakers. That sum was part of Brennan’s $185,000 annual salary package. The Greenway, which receives roughly half of its $4 million budget from the state to oversee the 15-acre park, racked up nearly $21,000 in lobbying expenses during that time, according to records.

That’s a lot of green, yeah?

Boston Globe:

Quest for admission to Harvard ends in $2 million tangle

To Gerald and Lily Chow, education consultant Mark Zimny must have seemed like the answer to many parents’ prayer: Please let my child get into Harvard University.

The Chows, who lived in Hong Kong, knew little about the US educational system, but they did know that they wanted an Ivy League education for their sons. And they had money to spend on consultants like Zimny, who, they believed, could help make the dream come true.

What transpired, however, turned out to be a cautionary tale for the thousands of parents who are fueling the growing global admissions-consulting industry.

Zimny, whom they met in 2007, had credentials. He had worked as a professor at Harvard. He ran an education consultancy, IvyAdmit. And he had a plan to help the Chows’ two sons, then 16 and 14.

First, Zimny’s company would provide tutoring and supervision while the boys attended American prep schools. Then, according to a complaint and other documents the Chows filed as part of a lawsuit in US District Court in Boston, Zimny said he would grease the admissions wheels, funneling donations to elite colleges while also investing on the Chows’ behalf.

Of course, it was the Chows who got not greased, but hosed.

Both stories are worth the read.

 

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